Chapter Fifteen
The call came at four in the morning.
Nadine was tangled with Pitfall, finally sleeping the kind of deep, dreamless sleep that had eluded her for weeks. When her phone screamed from the nightstand, she jerked awake so violently she nearly rolled off the bed.
"What—" Pitfall was already moving, already alert, the combat readiness never fully leaving him even in sleep.
Nadine grabbed the phone, saw the name on the screen, and her stomach dropped.
"Douglas?" Her voice came out scratchy. "What's wrong?"
The old man's voice was shaking. She'd never heard Douglas Fenton shake in her life—not when dealers cheated him, not when his arthritis got so bad he could barely hold his carving tools, not ever.
"It's Mabel." The words were barely audible. "Her workshop. Someone burned it."
The world tilted.
"What?"
"Fire department's there now. The whole thing—sixty years of work, Nadine. All her tools, her materials, everything her grandmother left her—" His voice broke. "It's gone. All of it."
Nadine was on her feet before she finished processing. Pitfall was right behind her, already reaching for his clothes.
"Is Mabel okay? Is she—"
"She wasn't there. Thank God, she wasn't there. She's been staying with her daughter this week because of everything happening." Douglas's breathing was ragged. "But the workshop... she built that place with her own hands. Raised her children in it. It's where she taught me to carve."
The grief in his voice was unbearable.
"I'm coming." Nadine was pulling on jeans, one-handed, the phone pressed to her ear. "Douglas, stay where you are. I'm coming."
The workshop was still smoking when they arrived.
Fire trucks blocked the narrow mountain road, their lights painting the predawn darkness in harsh red and white. Neighbors had gathered in clusters, faces illuminated by dying flames, watching sixty years of tradition collapse into ash.
Nadine pushed through the crowd until she found Mabel.
The old woman stood at the edge of her property, wrapped in a blanket someone had given her, staring at the ruins with eyes that held nothing. Empty. Hollowed out. Like the fire had burned something inside her too.
"Mabel." Nadine reached for her, touched her arm. "Mabel, I'm so sorry."
"They knew." Mabel's voice was distant, detached. "They knew I wasn't there. Knew the workshop would be empty." She turned to look at Nadine, and the emptiness in her eyes shifted into something worse. "They didn't want to kill me. They wanted to destroy everything I'd ever built."
"Who? Who did this?"
"Young man. Came by yesterday, asked questions about the cooperative. About you." Mabel's jaw tightened. "I didn't tell him anything. Didn't have to. He already knew where I lived."
Pitfall had been talking to the fire chief, but now he appeared at Nadine's side, his face carved from stone.
"Arson," he said flatly. "Accelerant around the foundation. Professional job—burned fast and hot, didn't give anyone time to respond."
"The young man." Nadine's voice sounded strange to her own ears. "Mabel said someone came asking questions."
"Description?"
Mabel's eyes focused, sharpening with the kind of rage that only came from watching your life's work turn to ash.
"Twenty-something. Dark hair, cruel mouth. Looked at my baskets like they were garbage." Her hands clenched in the blanket. "Said his family had business interests in the area. Said it would be a shame if anything happened to old ladies who didn't know when to mind their own."
Pitfall went very still.
"Trent Maggard," he said. "Boyd's nephew."
"You know him?"
"Know of him." His jaw was tight enough to crack teeth. "Handles enforcement when his uncle wants to make examples. Tends toward excessive force because he thinks restraint makes him look weak."
Nadine looked at the smoking ruins, at the firefighters picking through debris, at the old woman whose life had just been reduced to ash and memory.
"He did this because of me." The realization settled into her chest like poison. "Because his family keeps losing to a craft shop and a prospect. He couldn't get to me, so he went after the people I protect."
"Nadine—"
"Don't." She held up a hand, felt something dark and cold spreading through her veins. "Don't tell me it's not my fault. Don't tell me I couldn't have prevented this. I know all that. I know."
Pitfall watched her, waiting.
"Sixty years." Nadine's voice cracked. "She spent sixty years building that workshop. Learning from her grandmother, teaching her own children, preserving techniques that would have died without her. And he burned it down in one night because his pride got hurt."
"We'll rebuild. The club—"
"It's not about the building." The tears came then, hot and furious.
"It's about what it meant. Her grandmother's tools were in there.
The original loom she learned on. Letters, patterns, things that can never be replaced.
" She wiped her face angrily. "He didn't just burn a workshop. He burned a legacy."
Mabel had been listening. Now she reached out, took Nadine's hand in her gnarled fingers.
"Child." Her voice was stronger now, steadier. "I'm eighty-three years old. I've survived harder things than one fire. The knowledge is still here." She touched her temple. "The skills are still in these hands. Buildings can burn, but what I carry can't be taken."
"It shouldn't have happened."
"No. It shouldn't have." Mabel's grip tightened. "But it did. And now we decide what comes next."
They stayed until the fire was fully out.
Nadine helped Mabel sort through what little remained—a few tools that had survived in a metal cabinet, some supplies that had been stored in an outbuilding. Not much. Almost nothing, really. But Mabel touched each recovered item like it was treasure, her eyes wet but her spine straight.
By the time the sun rose, the scope of the destruction was brutally clear.
The workshop was gone. Completely, utterly gone. Where there had been a building full of history and tradition, there was now a blackened foundation and a pile of ash.
Nadine stood at the edge of the ruins and felt something shift inside her.
The grief was still there—heavy and sharp, a weight she'd carry for a long time. But underneath it, something else was growing. Something cold and purposeful and absolutely certain.
Trent Maggard had done this. Trent Maggard had looked at an eighty-three-year-old woman's life work and decided it was acceptable collateral damage in his family's war.
He was going to pay for that.
Not with money. Not with jail time. Not with any of the civilized consequences that supposedly existed for people who destroyed lives.
He was going to pay in blood.
Pitfall found her by the truck, staring at nothing.
"Mabel's going to the compound." His voice was careful, watching her. "Brothers are already setting up temporary space in the workshop building. She'll have somewhere to work by the end of the day."
"Good."
"Nadine—"
"I want him dead." The words came out flat, emotionless. "Trent Maggard. I want him to understand exactly what he destroyed, and then I want him dead."
Pitfall was quiet for a long moment.
"That's not how this works," he said finally. "Club handles—"
"I don't care how it works." She turned to face him, and whatever he saw in her eyes made him stop mid-sentence. "He burned down an old woman's life to prove a point. He destroyed sixty years of tradition because his ego couldn't handle losing to people he considered beneath him."
"I know."
"No, you don't." Her voice hardened. "Those baskets, those techniques—they're not just crafts.
They're the last connection to generations of women who came before.
Mabel's grandmother survived the Depression selling those baskets door to door.
Her great-grandmother made them during the Civil War.
When Trent burned that workshop, he didn't just destroy property. He erased history."
"Nadine—"
"He needs to know." She stepped closer, grabbed the front of his shirt.
"Before he dies, he needs to understand exactly what he took.
Not just from Mabel. From everyone who would have learned from her.
From every future generation that will never get to touch those original tools or see those patterns. "
Pitfall's hands came up to cover hers, but he didn't pull away.
"You want him to know why he's dying."
"Yes."
"You want to be there when it happens."
"Yes."
He studied her face for a long moment—this woman who'd walked into his life selling baskets and fighting for fair prices, who'd become a warrior without losing her heart, who was now asking him to help her watch a man die.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Trent Maggard is going to answer for this." His grip tightened on her hands. "And when he does, you'll be there. I'll make sure of it."
The cold thing in her chest pulsed with satisfaction.
"I want him to beg." She didn't recognize her own voice. "The way Mabel would have begged if she'd been home. The way every person he's ever terrorized has begged."
"He will."
"Promise me."
Pitfall pulled her close, wrapped his arms around her, held her against his chest while the morning sun climbed over mountains that had witnessed worse than this.
"I promise," he said into her hair. "Trent Maggard is going to understand exactly what he destroyed. And then he's going to die knowing that it cost him everything."
Nadine pressed her face into his chest and let the cold, purposeful thing inside her settle into something like peace.
Not forgiveness. Not healing. Just the certainty that justice was coming, and she would be there to see it delivered.
"Before he dies," she whispered. "I want him to know what he took. I want him to understand exactly what he destroyed."
Pitfall's arms tightened around her.
"He will," he promised. "I'll make sure of it."
She believed him.
And for the first time since the phone call that shattered her sleep, she felt something like calm.
The storm was coming. And Trent Maggard was standing directly in its path.